The present invention relates to a new and improved method of unrolling and piecing a lap, and to an improved construction of a lap drive for combing machines, lap drafters and similar machines.
Equipment of this type is known to the art incorporating a driven pair of support rolls for supporting the lap to be unrolled for processing.
With state-of-the-art combers and lap drafters a new lap is placed onto the stopped support rolls during replacement of the empty lap tube. For the purpose of piecing the new fiber layer to the end of the old fiber layer the operator is required to lift the lap off the support rolls and then unrolls a sufficiently long piece of the fiber layer for the purpose of piecing the same to the fiber layer which is in the process of running-out. The piecing operation occurs after the lap has been placed back onto the support rolls.
Hence, the operator, for each lap exchange, lifts the new, heavy lap for a certain period of time and simultaneously rotates such lifted lap and thereafter pieces the fiber layer which has been unrolled from the new lifted lap to the end of the old fiber layer without damaging the unrolled piece of fiber layer.
This manual work is extremely tedious inasmuch as the weight of each lap amounts to about 14 kilograms and an operator is required to perform as many as sixty lap exchanges per hour.
In consideration of the tendency of using larger, and thus, also considerably heavier laps, it is extremely desirable to eliminate this strenuous manual work.